Octet

[Bree Perkins 1E]

On Wednesday the professor briefly talked about octets, when adding or removing an electron, and I am really sorry if this is a dumb question, but what exactly does he mean by an octet? It is something I don't remember from high school chemistry.

[Sollie1G]

An atom can have up to eight electrons in its outermost shell. Noble gases (Helium, Neon, Argon, etc) have full shells; or eight valence electrons, and because they have the maximum possible amount of valence electrons in their outermost shells, they are the most stable atoms. To become stable, an atom can "give up" or "take" electrons through bonding with other atoms. This is important/directly applicable to Lewis dot structures

[Steven Luong 1E]

An Octet means 8 valence electrons ==> Oct = 8, like Octopus with 8 tentacles. An atom, in order to be more stable, can have up to eight electrons in its valence shell. Noble gases (Neon, Argon, etc) have full shells of eight valence electrons each. This complete configuration allows stable gases to be the most stable atoms. The are some exceptions but we have not learned them yet. In order for atoms without an octet to gain it, they can ionically or covalently bond with other atoms to gain that octet; the type of bond that yields the lowest possible energy will be the most stable, and the atoms will be bonded as such.

[Patience Olsen 1A]

Also, the eight electrons come from two electrons in the s-orbital and six electrons in the p-orbital for most atoms. Hope this clarifies things a bit.

[Paywand Baghal]

An Octet means 8 valence electrons ==> Oct = 8, like Octopus with 8 tentacles. An atom, in order to be more stable, can have up to eight electrons in its valence shell. Noble gases (Neon, Argon, etc) have full shells of eight valence electrons each. This complete configuration allows stable gases to be the most stable atoms. The are some exceptions but we have not learned them yet. In order for atoms without an octet to gain it, they can ionically or covalently bond with other atoms to gain that octet; the type of bond that yields the lowest possible energy will be the most stable, and the atoms will be bonded as such.

does it need 8 to be stable though?

[Steven Luong 1E]

An Octet means 8 valence electrons ==> Oct = 8, like Octopus with 8 tentacles. An atom, in order to be more stable, can have up to eight electrons in its valence shell. Noble gases (Neon, Argon, etc) have full shells of eight valence electrons each. This complete configuration allows stable gases to be the most stable atoms. The are some exceptions but we have not learned them yet. In order for atoms without an octet to gain it, they can ionically or covalently bond with other atoms to gain that octet; the type of bond that yields the lowest possible energy will be the most stable, and the atoms will be bonded as such.

does it need 8 to be stable though?

For most atoms, the answer is yes. However, as we progress further in the course, there will be many exceptions, like Xenon and Boron. However, the general trend for the most stable atom is 8 electrons.

[Cindy Nguyen 1L]

An extra detail is that the first four elements never have an octet.

[NabilaNizam-1K]

Since the first four elements will not achieve octet, is there a special term for the condition when these elements achieve stable state and all the orbitals are filled?